


Rotten apples are the sweetest fruit

by Baryshnikov



Series: Spoiled Fruit [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asphyxiation, Character Study, Dark, Dark Harry Potter, Dom/sub Undertones, Established Relationship, M/M, Minor Violence, Moral Decay, Possessive Tom Riddle, Power Dynamics, Praise Kink, Romance, Sensuality, Tom really isn't a good person, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-08
Updated: 2019-11-08
Packaged: 2021-01-25 13:00:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21356635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom isn't a good man, but Harry doesn't care anymore.
Relationships: Harry Potter/Tom Riddle
Series: Spoiled Fruit [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616770
Comments: 9
Kudos: 430





	Rotten apples are the sweetest fruit

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Flowers of Rainy Nights](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21195521) by [Snowy_Rain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowy_Rain/pseuds/Snowy_Rain). 

> I apologise, I should have been updating but, instead, I wrote this mess. Though part of that is because of Snowy_Rain's gorgeous little fic which got hooked inside my head, please go and check it out if you haven't already.

Harry had always thought he’d be able to spot decay. To taste the mildew of rot in the corners of his mouth as soon as it appeared; he thought rot left behind a thousand signs that couldn’t be hidden behind a pretty façade, that when the very structure was rotten a lick of paint wouldn’t do anything to disguise it. 

Then he met Tom. 

The man’s soul, if he had one at all, must have been black with rot. The sort of deterioration only achievable by an abandonment of all morality; a genuine recklessness as to the state of himself. But the thing about Tom that was so hypnotic was, despite how decayed and putrefied and twisted beyond belief he was inside, when he smiled, it sparkled like good champagne. 

Harry swallowed and shook his head; he was thinking of the past again. A painful habit of his childhood that he’d never quite shaken off. Tom did it too, just drifted off into the distance like he was trying to remember something that had never happened.

That was why they were good for each other because they shared the same story, just written with different words. 

It was late now, past eleven, but they were both still sitting in the living room; the radio crooning some haunting song; the sort of sound that can only be made late at night when there were just a select few to hear it. The notes carried between them, weaving through the thickness of the air. The atmosphere had been heavy all afternoon, viscous and distinctly sticky, part was due to the weather, and a budding storm, the rest was Tom.

He got these moods. These temperaments characterised by an intenseness that was almost painful to be around; all his magic coming to the surface and buzzing like a static. Harry would have described it as murderous, but without the distinguishing violence, instead, there was a cruelty in those moods, a malice to the extent that Harry had never actually seen before, and all topped off with a callousness that was a little… unnerving. It got Harry on edge, not because he was scared for himself, but rather he was scared for the others.

Despite them all knowing Tom for years, there was always one _idiot_ who would step out of line at the wrong moment and end up… well, that depended, didn’t it? Sometimes it was in the hands of someone who knew basic healing, sometimes it was a hospital, just once it had been a grave.

Harry remembered that one. 

Because things had changed after. What had been purely a friendship of sorts, founded in a fascination with someone so similar, turned quickly in a whole lot more. 

_That_ was why Harry was wary of these moods, because, sooner or later they would lead to Tom’s mouth against his, and Tom’s magic chafing his skin, and Tom just unable to stop himself from taking exactly what he wanted. Not that Harry would ever complain. 

He liked Tom taking what he wanted. 

But Tom was taking his time tonight. He’d been in a mood since midday; something someone had said, had set this whole thing off, and he’d been seething slowly, simmering in it all afternoon, letting the words infuse into his skin, permeate right down into his bones, saturating him from the inside out, and Harry had had to put up with it.

It was becoming unbearable. 

A black fog choking out every feeling in this room, invading all of Harry’s thoughts until there was nothing inside his head than the thought of Tom. And he’d tried distracting himself, for an hour he’d stared at the first page of the quidditch magazine, reading the editor’s note again and again, but always unable to shake the feeling that Tom was watching. 

He wasn’t. 

He was four feet away.

Spread across his favourite chair in such a _comfortable_ position that it was almost indecent. His left ankle resting so artfully on his right knee, and his shoulders spread back in a way so un-imitable, and his neck tilted to the side, a crease formed in the skin as he read his book. He hadn’t moved for a couple of hours now, at least, nothing more than the superficial turning of a page.

Harry swallowed again.

Even when Tom was merely sitting there, reading, he held command of the room. Though it was very different from how he held it when his ‘friends’ were here. For when _they_ were around, Tom was tense; he held it in the straightness of his back, and the set of his fingers, and the sharp jolts of his movements. They, through irritation and frustration and general incompetence, put Tom on edge, especially when he was like this, always looking for a reason to curse someone within an inch of their life. 

And he would. 

That was the thrilling thing about Tom, he _would_.

Harry had watched, once. It hadn’t been pleasant, but he hadn’t expected it to be; it was merely something that he _had_ to witness, a corner of Tom’s soul that he had to understand, however horrible it was to see flesh crawling and to hear a howling that didn’t even sound human anymore. 

But it had been worth the blood and the mangled bits of person that were left ingrained into the concrete because Tom had been rougher that night. Taking what he wanted with newly revealed viciousness. Not caring if he left behind the imprints of his nails and the shapes of his fingerprints on Harry’s skin.

And Harry had got to understand Tom little bit more. 

Adding to his jigsaw.

Carefully coming to the conclusion that Tom wasn’t a good person. Though Harry found himself minding less and less. Perhaps, that was wrong, but Tom would never hurt him, and Tom would never let _anyone else_ hurt him either. Not when Tom treasured him the way he did like his own personal trophy, coveted him like he’d won him in a competition Harry didn’t even know he’d been part of. 

But Tom was different when it was just the two of them.

Alone. 

Like that, all the tension melted away like seafoam, and Tom was left there – all languid and lazy, limbs like liquid as he shifted and turned each page of his book. Harry could sit and examine him forever when he was relaxed like this; when he no longer had to keep up every single layer of his masquerade, and just let a few of them drop away like dead petals. 

Never enough to expose the true colours of his soul. But, certainly, _enough_ to show what he was underneath. Harry never knew precisely what it was that Tom did when they were alone, what exactly it was that he added or removed from his countenance, but he was pretty sure _he_ was the only one that Tom stripped himself back for.

“You’re watching me,” Tom said, interrupting his thoughts, but not looking up from his book. “You have been for ten minutes now. Why?”

Harry shifted in his seat, uncrossing his legs and bringing both feet to rest flat on the wood of the floor. “You know why,” he said softly. They’d been through this routine so many times that they both knew how it went. They both knew the words and the choreography to dance to as they waltzed around each other.

Tom looked up, though his fingers stayed resting on the book page. There was such an intensity to his eyes, a darkness in them that Harry had denied for so long. In Tom’s eyes was everything rich and provocative and dangerous; at once both an invitation and a warning. They roamed over his face so expertly, reading the micro-expressions Harry always forgot to hide. 

“You know I like to hear you say it,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on Harry’s own until it became once again unbearable to hold his gaze. Almost as though Tom had burning embers in his eyes that singed anyone who stared too long. 

Harry dragged his eyes down before he was charred; the floor could be just as fascinating as Tom’s eyes. He let his gaze follow the grains of the wood, tracing them up and down and up again, from the tips of Tom’s shoes back to his own, drawing little connecting lines to keep them together. 

“I like to hear you say it,” Tom repeated.

Tom always liked to hear it because he danced the line of narcissism like it was a personal achievement to land on the wrong side. Always pushing harder against what was acceptable; Tom was an expert at finding the limit and moving it further out like a tidal line, and time and time again Harry _let_ him redraw the boundaries of what this was supposed to be. 

Harry swallowed. 

It wasn’t that he didn’t like saying it _out loud_, saying exactly what Tom was, because he did. He liked reminding himself just how dangerous a game he was playing; he _liked_ knowing what Tom could do to him if he asked. Rather, Harry didn’t want to speak because his throat was so raw already, exposed just from staring.

But Tom eyes would continue to eat into him until he said something.

“I’m watching you,” he started, far too quiet, the edges of his tone fraying already, “because you’re fascinating.”

It wasn’t a lie, Tom _was_ fascinating. Ever since Harry had first laid eyes on him, he’d known that. There was an undeniable charisma rolling beneath his skin like an underground magma flow that heated right to the surface. Tom was simply magnetic, the way he smiled as he pulled things, he wanted towards him, just as a planet pulls rocks right out of space, was compelling beyond belief.

Hypnotic. 

Mesmeric. 

“I’m watching you because you’re powerful and capable and undeniable.” Harry paused to breath, Tom hadn’t moved yet, his hand still against the pages of his book like at any second he might decide that these feelings hadn’t yet simmered enough to be expressed. 

“I’m watching you because I like the way you sit.”  
As he said it Tom shifted, not out of nervousness, but from confidence, moving both his feet to the floor and spreading his legs just a little wider. Harry watched, unable to stop himself from shifting his movements to match.  
“And I like the way you smile.”  
On cue, Tom smiled, the corner of his mouth stretching outward and his head tipping back a little to get himself a better view.  
“And I like the way you look at me.”  
Harry didn’t even need to finish before Tom’s eyes were dipping over him, taking his time to examine every part like this was their first-time meeting again. 

“What else?” said Tom. Always unable to resist the pull of adulation, not that Harry was one to deny him, he could spend all day, and all night talking about all the bits of Tom he liked. All the parts he wanted to have for himself. Tom’s flair, Tom’s theatrics, Tom’s control. 

“I like how you know what you want,” Harry said, his hands fumbling more in his lap, trying to grip at a cushion, because he needed _something_ tangible to hold and to touch and to squeeze, “and I like that you know how to get it…”

Tom stood up and Harry’s words died on the tip of his tongue as he watched him stretch slowly; his back arching and bones clicking.  
“Go on,” said Tom rolling his shoulders and cracking his knuckles as if he didn’t care for the words. Harry knew he did. Tom craved that praise and the adoration and exaltation that Harry would give him.

He _needed_ it. 

“…I’m – I’m watching you because I’m trying to see the rot inside you.”

Tom smiled, his eyes dipping momentarily to the floor, or maybe it was his hands. Maybe he was trying to see the decay under his skin; the festering putrid thing that encased his veins and stitched its way through every inch of him. Perhaps he could see it, or perhaps, there genuinely wasn’t anything there to see.

Harry licked his lips, trying to find enough moisture in his mouth to say more, to get Tom here, beside him. “And I’m trying to reconcile what I see before me,” he said, never taking eyes from Tom’s hands, “with what you _really_ are.”

Tom was standing right behind him now. Harry could see him in the mirror across the room, a great stretch of silver and glass that showed everything he did, and did not, want to see. Tom, always Tom standing so close, his hand resting in Harry’s hair. White skin almost luminescent, like the moon hanging in the night sky. And always touching so gently, twirling the curls of Harry’s hair around his fingers as if they were wildflowers.

“And what am I, Harry?”

He said it so carefully, so softly that it barely registered over the serenade of the radio, and still his fingers worked themselves between the curls of Harry’s hair. It was so soothing that he let his eyes fall shut, and just concentrated on Tom teasing out a curl before letting it drop and following it as it fell. Tracing patterns on his scalp, figures of eight and twisted and curled and right down to his neck, because Tom could never resist touching his neck. 

But Tom’s hand stopped at the nape, just resting there, both oppressive and freeing; firm and gentle and every other paradox that was contained inside him. 

Harry opened his eyes.

Tom was still watching him, “what am I, Harry?” he repeated, the smooth, almost liquid surface of his magic starting to press against Harry’s skin. In a minute, his insides would begin to ache as Tom coiled deeper inside him, winding himself around Harry’s own, more abrasive, magic until they coalesced.

Two people sharing one strain of magic that fizzed and burned and chafed. 

Harry swallowed, and their eyes met in the mirror like they always did. And despite this not being new, Harry’s heart was still thumping as loud as the first time, and his hands were still fumbling, and his legs were still quivering under the strain of keeping them still. 

“You’re a monster.”

Tom’s right hand slowly slithered around Harry’s neck to clasp at his throat, “so close,” he murmured as his left hand rested heavily on Harry’s shoulder, the nails digging into his jumper, knitting themselves between the threads of wool. “So close,” he said again licking his lips and looking up to meet Harry’s eyes in the mirror. There was something beautiful, almost biblical, about the moment. The press of Tom’s hand on his shoulder and the edge of his smile, tearing at the corners.

A guardian angel, come to protect him.

Or the devil himself come to suck his soul out from his own mouth. 

Harry was past the point of caring; after all, absolute power will warp anyone, no matter how _good_ their intentions are, so what did it matter trying to have good intentions? Especially now when Tom was standing there, watching, smiling, his hand so bright against Harry’s throat, the heat of it corroding his skin, when Harry knew he was more in love than ever. 

Like a renaissance painting, they stood, framed by the edges of the mirror, both so still, waiting got the other to start to crack. Harry could see how their reflections did not move, how barely even breathed, how, in this moment, they were beyond mere mortality. _This_ was what Tom strived for, the perfect, perpetual, endurance of an image that could never die

And still, Harry waited for the inevitable squeeze.

For Tom’s hot hand to press against his pulse, to slide up and shape itself, moulding to fit the contours of Harry’s throat. And it would come, a wave knocking him over as Tom squeezed out all the air from his lungs, until his world was nothing more than swirls of colour, of shapes and sounds that he could not hear.

It was an ascension of sorts. 

And it began with Tom tightening his muscles, spreading out his hand as wide as it would go like it was maw that was going to swallows Harry’s throat in one mouthful; a heat that was undeniable and nails like teeth, almost breaking the flesh. Tom would squeeze, crushing his muscles and his bones and his skin together into this mush.

It was a pounding in his throat, and a throbbing in his lungs, and a tingling in his lips, but it was beautiful. Gorgeous to feel Tom’s hand so tangible against him, around him, his knuckles white and bent, and his fingertips buried in the shadows. For there were shadows everywhere; they crawled into the cracks of Tom’s face, highlighting every angle with increasingly devasting clarity. Sharpening each bone until Harry was sure he would cut himself if he tried to touch them.

It with amongst those simple seconds, growing up like reeds all around Harry, that he could feel the rot starting to permeate into his own lungs; the decay spreading through him, pushed by carbon dioxide until simple suffocation felt so close.

But it did not feel too bad to rot.

“What am I, Harry?” Tom said again, the words all distant, and the tone so thick and dreamy like heavy cream, but his nails still digging into his veins like brambles pricking the skin. If Harry could focus, he might have been able to see the blood that must have been starting to collect under Tom’s fingernails.

But he couldn't see anything but the colour of Tom’s hair and feel anything but the clench of his hand. 

He tried to swallow, to blink, to focus on reality instead of the raging in his ears and blackness smudging out the world. Tom’s hand tightened again, tilting his neck back and exposing his throat further. “Tell me what I am.”

“My monster,” Harry choked out, the words sticking to his tongue, molten gold too heavy to float out and so it sagged, dripping off his tongue like sludge. 

“That’s right,” said Tom, loosening his grip enough to have Harry gasping; his throat scratched down and coated in sand, with nothing to soothe it. Before he bent down, leaning over the back of the sofa, his hand hooking back around Harry’s neck, but this time to tilt Harry's face towards his own, and to kiss him, as slow and full as every time before. “Your monster,” he murmured into Harry’s mouth, “only ever yours, Harry.”

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, I'm not sure how my initial idea descended into this, but congratulations for finishing it.


End file.
